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symbolset writes "The Atlantic recently ran an in-depth article about energy resources. The premise is that there remain incalculable and little-understood carbon fuel assets which far outweigh all the fossil fuels ever discovered. The article lists them and discusses their potentials and consequences, both fiscal and environmental. 'The clash occurs when renewables are ready for prime time—and natural gas is still hanging around like an old and dirty but reliable car, still cheap to produce and use, after shale fracking is replaced globally by undersea mining of methane hydrate. Revamping the electrical grid from conventionals like coal and oil to accommodate unconventionals like natural gas and solar power will be enormously difficult, economically and technically.' Along these lines, yesterday the U.S. Geological Survey more than doubled their estimate of Bakken shale oil reserve in North Dakota and Montana to 7.4-11 billion barrels. Part of the push for renewables over the past few decades was the idea that old methods just weren't going to last. What happens to that push if fossil fuels remain plentiful?"

Kunstler doesn't add much to the question posed. He burries the meat of his argument under this horrible diatribe:

You could call these two examples mendacious if it weren't so predictable that a desperate society would do everything possible to defend its sunk costs, including the making up of fairy tales to justify its wishes. Instead, they're merely tragic because the zeitgeist now requires once-honorable forums of a free press to indulge in self-esteem building rather than truth-telling. It also represe

I did, or rather, I started to. Every time an author resorts to abuse instead of argument, his credibility gets cut in half. About four sentences in, I realized that that article wasn't worth the time I'd already spent reading it.

Kunstler's op-ed piece provides some compelling counter-arguments arguments that are sadly cobblered up together with invectives to the point of being emotional. If we wanted emotional we could simply tune to BravoTV or some crap like that.

The "Atlantic" is simply running a hypothetical "what-if" scenario, and the potential consequences of it. It is a "what-if" (something you always want to see and debate if you are truly open-minded), not a "will-be" article as it is being presented (demonized/ridiculed

Environmentalists are not saying we're running out of oil. "Peak Oil" does not mean the end of oil. Indeed it's believed to happen when around half the oil has been extracted, and half is still in the ground. The reason production goes down is because the remaining oil gets more and more difficult to extract. Costly both financially and in terms of energy. And if it cost > 1 joule of energy to extract oil that gives 1 joule, it's not worth it.

Note that the first 50% of oil was mostly consumed in a century. Because of increased consumption, even if the second 50% were easy to extract, it wouldn't last a century.

Environmentalists ARE saying that oil is polluting, both in terms of traditional pollutants, and releasing green house gasses. And if we have to switch to renewables anyway, why not do it as soon as possible.

And if we have to switch to renewables anyway, why not do it as soon as possible.

This question is easier to ask when you're making well-above-average computer-programmer-level salaries and quadrupling the price of electricity and fuel (or something) and the various manufactured things which depend on that price isn't going to really ding your lifestyle. But given the number of people in this world who make a trivial fraction of that, it gets more complicated.

And if we have to switch to renewables anyway, why not do it as soon as possible.

This question is easier to ask when you're making well-above-average computer-programmer-level salaries and quadrupling the price of electricity and fuel (or something) and the various manufactured things which depend on that price isn't going to really ding your lifestyle. But given the number of people in this world who make a trivial fraction of that, it gets more complicated.

That sounds a lot like figuring the cost of something based solely on what you paid at the cash register.

How about this, instead? We invest in alternative energy technologies R&D now? Then when (or if, if you prefer) the cost of oil-based energy becomes prohibitive, we'll be prepared, instead of waiting until the last moment and running around like the denizens of Tokyo when Godzilla comes to town? We'll have already learned the expensive mistakes and false starts, and be able to more efficiently deploy the most cost-effective alternatives when we need them.

I realize that there is a large segment of the population that screams we're absolutely utterly helpless whenever a problem comes up that cannot be solved by invading and pillaging, but I have a little bit more faith in both Nature and the human race. If we just take some responsibility and do something instead of waiting around quivering until the oil taps run dry, we just might achieve something worthwhile.

We always seem to be able to find the money to fund wars, so I don't buy into the idea that we cannot afford to provide for our own future. What's the point of winning the wars if the country is destroyed by its own negligence?

How about this, instead? We invest in alternative energy technologies R&D now?

If you're going to use the word "invest", let's talk investment and ask the tough questions, see if we can come up with some good answers. What is the return on this investment? Is it financial, or non-financial? Are the returns earned by the owner of the investment or by third parties? Who is qualified to estimate the size of these returns in an unbiased manner? (If non-financial returns are being earned by the third parties, it may be better understood as an exercise in philanthropy than in investment.) What is the opportunity cost of this investment: are there other investments which could make a non-philanthropic investor more money, or, if we're operating in the realm of philanthropy, are there other worthier philanthropic endeavors with larger and more immediate returns that we ought to be investing in, instead of this? (There are a lot of candidate investments in the class of "get clean water to $african_village".)

By "let's invest" do you primarily mean "let's have the government levy taxes and attempt to make this happen"? What sort of incentives are in place to make sure that the "investment" actually is done wisely, rather than becoming an exercise in corporate leeches clamoring for government funds but producing nothing of value? Or even just bankruptcy a la Solyndra? (There's room enough for criticism about where the money gets to when the government "always seem[s] to be able to find money to fund wars", and wars are relatively easy to measure results on.) What is the real price of this investment to taxpayers, in terms of taxes or debt and debt-service (and the effects of debt like the government calls "crowding out"?) And if "we always seem to be able to find the money to fund wars", what about the ~50% increase in US government spending combined with ~0% increase in government revenues since 2007, and the commensurate increase in the annual deficit to ~50% of revenues? That's easily more spending than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined; should we roll some of the new programs back in order to pay for this proposed investment? How do you sell the policy changes to people as politically active entities, especially if they will suffer material setbacks (taxes or higher energy costs)? Even if they're willing to suffer setbacks in theory, do the people trust these investments to actually deliver meaningful value of some sort?

Not that all these questions are unanswerable. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking it's easy.

Are the returns earned by the owner of the investment or by third parties?

Yes and yes.

Who is qualified to estimate the size of these returns in an unbiased manner?

Banks, actuaries, scientists

What is the opportunity cost of this investment

The influence of existing interests (Koch/Exxon, etc.) will wane.
Electricity usage will come down (see the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which covers 20% of the US economy, which grew relative to the rest of the US economy) giving factories a competitive advantage.
New economies will grow -- a small portion of Exxon's profits gets injected directly into the local economy creating jobs that improve energy efficiency in industry and housing.

It's really a non-brainer, and there is empirical proof that these are the effects, because other parts of the world (and the US) have already started trying these thing.

I found this amusing:

"let's have the government levy taxes and attempt to make this happen"

Conservatives harp on about incentive structures, so, to adopt a neo-liberal (market fundamentalist) approach to solving GHG emissions, let's tax what we don't want (carbon), and let the market sort out the rest. Heck, we can reduce taxes on what we do want (labour/entrepreneurship).

You want to talk opportunity cost? Do you want more carbon in the atmosphere and higher taxes on labour, or less carbon in the atmosphere and lower taxes on labour?

I could go on about Solyndra, but I think that's enough for now. Just look further into the program that funded Solyndra and ask yourself home much money was wasted/earned in *totality*, and how that compares to typical venture capitalism.

The difference, of course, is that I paid for Solyndra. I didn't pay for the venture capitalists.

That's a nonsequitor. The earlier poster's point was that you benefited from all the value generated by that program. You need to look at the program as a whole, and ask how successful it was.

The principle followed by venture capitalists (which the earlier poster was using as an analogy) is that some of the projects you fund should fail. If none of them do, that means you aren't taking enough risks. And if you aren't willing to take risks, you're unlikely to have the huge successes that make the whole b

No, you absolutely do not get it. It's not "Republican" or "Democrat" doing it, go back and read what I wrote!

I get it, media brainwashes you in to thinking there is still a difference. There is no difference, and it does not take a whole lot of investigation to see what has been happening. The people pulling the strings want you to think that way. They pit us against each other any way that they can in order to keep us from looking at them! You fell for it hook line and sinker. Will you continue to be duped or look around and see what's happening? I will warn you, the rabbit hole is deep and pretty scary.

Nearly everything you hear on main stream media regarding politics (foreign and domestic) is propaganda. It's rhetoric convincing you that they are right to do what ever they want to do.

Example: Yesterday it was reported that most of the anti Assad regime are the same terrorists we went to war with in Afghanistan. Today, Obama want's to give them arms. The rebel forces have used chemical weapons at least 3 times but you have to go to foreign media sources to find that out. Assad has used none that we can prove, nor will you find any references to this in foreign media. The guys the president now want's to back with weapons (in addition to the billions of US tax dollars he already gave them) broke his proverbial line in the sand.

It's to the point now, where they don't even try to follow their own rhetoric. They are shitting on you and your fellow humans.

There are no viable alternative energy investments, currently. Solar is as close as it comes, and that's really not a viable alternative for oil.

Oh, did you mean research? Research money is entirely different than investment money; investment money expects at least a close to parity return. Research money is a sunk cost; it's completely unknown.

Let's not be disingenious.

Truth be told you've got a lot to do in physical research before anything for energy storage becomes viable as an oil replacement. Your bes

Or something? You're making an argument when you don't even know? Check out green energy tariffs. They are a bit more expensive than ordinary ones. But not 4 times, that would be ridiculous.

But that's by the by. Fossil fuels are not a repeatable bargain. The human race can extract them once every several million years. What makes you think that you saving a bit of money is justification for using up all of a particular resource, and polluting the place in the process? Why do you deserve it more than your grandchildren, great grandchildren and so on.

Remember, oil isn't just for energy. It's a raw material for manufacturing most products too. Do you really think it's wise to burn it off in the next generation, leaving nothing left for the thousands of generations to come?

"The US Department of Energy estimates that a new photovoltaic power plant entering service in 2017 will runs about $157/MWh in total levelized system costs (in 2010 dollar terms)."

Ahh, the famous DOE report. The numbers in question were from the 2008 time frame. Prices since then have fallen 4-fold.

I bought my SolarWorld 230W panels in 2010 for $2.30 a watt. Today I can buy 270W versions for $1 a watt. I can get Chinese A-brands, like Trina, for about $0.75.

The price of power from PV is directly related to system cost and pretty much nothing else. Total installed costs have fallen from about $8 a watt to about $3 a watt. Factor that in, and the fact that the numbers in the DoE report are from even earlier, and you're looking at a 4 to 5-fold decrease in system prices.

When you factor that in, power from PV is about 12 to 25 cents, which is *extremely* competitive with other peaking sources like NG.

The problem with using cost as a major argument against renewable energy sources is that the price of gas has skyrocketed in the last decade. The price this year is close to three times what it was when I started driving (about 12 years ago, bigger difference for older folks I'm sure) and I don't see anything to suggest the price won't continue to go up. This is in contrast to renewable energy which, while still far more expensive than fossil fuels, are decreasing in price. So while the easy thing to say is renewable energy is too expensive, the facts actually suggest that in another decade or two it'll be the other way around even if we don't increase our efforts in studying renewable energy. I don't believe we can magically switch tomorrow, I do believe we need to start taking a switch seriously now though and begin what will be a long, slow transition period. It's going to cost more in the short term, but it'll be cheaper long term.

Gas is cheaper in inflation-adjusted dollars than when I started paying attention to it. Commodity prices are cyclical. Fearing that they will go to infinity because you've only experienced on upswing is just like fearing the oceans will all boil during the first Summer of your life.

If solar ever does become cheaper than natural gas (and eventually it will), everyone will switch then. Trying to force other people to consume some product that you think is cool is about being a control freak, plain and simple.

This is just scare-mongering. Germany is moving to renewables, and their electricity bills didn't triple because of feed-in tariffs. They have created 340k jobs, many high-tech, and have moved the country to 20% renewables even whilst growing relative to the rest of the world.

Solar/wind will soon cost less than oil/coal/nuclear, even when you discount the cost of pollution. We have already reached the threshold depending on how you measure. (Pricing a coal power-plant includes pricing the future cost of

If you're going to tie it into your mortgage, you're in luck. Because you can get a 10K Watt system installed into the house, which will probably put energy back into the grid (paying you during peak hours). You'll end up coming out way ahead even with maintenance. Numbers vary based on location and who does the installation, but you'll be in fantastic shape before year 15 in just about every case without incentives.

The best part? Those expensive $150/month bills will be the happiest months because you'

There are other gains as well. There is loss of voltage through long distance power lines, so 5KW of electricity coming from solar/batteries is a lot less than what is needed to be pushed from a substation to a house, through a number of step-up and step-down transformers in order to overcome the resistance in the wires. This is something that isn't thought of -- someone might think $5 in solar may not recoup $5 in energy, but realistically, it saves far more electricity.

Solar is constantly improving. Supercap batteries can be used as a front-end (fast charging, lower energy density) for the regular ones, to allow charging to continue even after there is no usable sunlight, as well as take advantage of peaks (cloud edge effects) that a normal charger wouldn't be able to use.

This doesn't say that even distinct solar panels have to be used. There are roofing shingles that might make less wattage, but make up for it by no need to install brackets and such.

Solar does have its detractors. When RV-ing, solar is a must have for anyone who decides to do camping that isn't at a full hookup resort. However, outside of the RV world, there are always people who complain that the energy it takes to make a complete solar panel (frame, cells, wires, etc.) are far more than the panel will ever generate in its usable lifetime. It is hard to change that attitude.

I agree with the above, perhaps even tossing a bone to the gas/coal industries with a subsidy, so they can produce less, but not dent their bottom line. In the long run, it would be a win/win for everyone involved.

I wish there were some way to convert natural gas into propane. Propane has a lot of nice qualities as a fuel, from being able to be stored as a liquid (which means it approaches gasoline for energy density), to not being a greenhouse gas, to being extremely useful as a refrigerant (R-290.) A vehicle with a propane tank would have almost as much range as a normal gasoline vehicle. To boot, if propane spills on the ground, it goes downhill and disperses, and doesn't make a mini-Superfund site like gasoline does.

Bingo, which is why I have been saying for years we need a "people's car/truck" that runs on diesel (so we can switch to biodiesel down the road) and which gets 40 MPG and sells for less than $25k, after which we THEN offer tax breaks and hell if we gotta just even swap for all the old clunkers that the poor are using which just belch and smoke and blow through gas.

Say that with a German accent and I'd swear you were reading from a Volkswagen piece from the 1930s describing the Type 1 -- or Bug.

The reason why not is obvious. Oil companies have their place in the markets, their sunk costs invested in equipment, technology, business processes, and distribution networks. Their interest is not in getting off oil as soon as it is possible, or practical. It is to stave off that transition as long as possible, to make sure that extracting and refining oil remains profitable right up until the last possible drop that can be produced and consumed is produced and consumed.

Presumably at some point, if they want to remain in the energy business, they will themselves convert to something else so that when there is no more oil that can be practically and profitably produced, they will remain in the market by diversifying.

So there's the time when environmentalists say we should transition (now) and the time when oil companies say we should transition (when oil is no longer profitable, when they say so) and what actually happens will fall somewhere in the middle, very likely much closer to the latter than the former, because when it comes to resolving conflicts of interest between the energy sector and interests of ordinary citizens, most Western governments have a pretty terrible track record.

Except that it wasn't. We keep finding more and more, and that 50% keeps going down and down...

Well, in this context the word "oil" is ambiguous. It could mean a very specific thing, in which case the 50% is closer. Or it could mean anything that falls under the category "petroleum", which is the way I took it.

Hubbert was a geologist working for an oil company. The fact that new discoveries come along, but at an ever slowing pace, was hardly something he wasn't aware of, and isn't a flaw in the theory.

The 50% is "50% of oil in the ground", not "50% of oil that we've discovered". The 100% doesn't move, other than at the pace of geological time frames.

That doesn't even make sense. At any point in time, what we think is 50% is, uhm, you know, base on what we think is 100%. That number keeps going up and up. But how much we used in the first century of use, somehow, manages to stay the same, and thus is a smaller and smaller portion of what we think the total in ground is.

It's not a theory until he demonstrates the hypothesis predicts something. He didn't. I know, I know. Hubbert predicted peak oil in the U.S. putting the date of peak oil as 1972 and lo! U.S. oil output peaked in 1972. Of course Hubbert didn't predict any such thing. He got lucky.

He also got lucky more than 50 more times as subsequent countries also passed peak oil.

Feel free to reveal the means by which you've nailed down the quantity of oil that amounts to 100%.

And if it cost > 1 joule of energy to extract oil that gives 1 joule, it's not worth it.

it isn't that simple. Oil makes a tremendously good battery. it is highly portable and has a very high energy density. It is better than any other battery we currently have. So even if it begins costing >1 joule of energy to extract 1 joule worth of oil, it will still be in high demand for its energy storage capability unless we invent a better battery. if it takes more energy to pull out of the earth than we get from it, then we will just find other means to pull it out of the earth, such as poweri

Also, I'm a libertarian, and so far I've made a lot more from bitcoins than they have cost me. I've paid about an extra $5 per month in electricity costs for mining over the last 4 months since I started, and I've already acquired about $200 worth of goods bought from bitcoins. It

The rest of your post is basically an assumption that we should allow the oil companies to dictate energy policy according to what's profitable for them. Well, it probably will go like that. But it shouldn't and it doesn't have to.

Renewable energy is widely used indeed, but so far often thanks to subsidies. In Germany, for instance, electricity from renewables gets a guaranteed price for 20 years from installation of a plant (paid for by an apportionment of the costs to the buyers of electricity).

The interesting point is "grid parity", when making your own electricity becomes cheaper than buying it. For private households we have reached this point in Germany, but with an important qualifier:If you had to make your own electricity al

Note that the first 50% of easy and cheap to get at oil was mostly consumed in a century.

No. The 50% of total oil we've extracted was the easy and cheap oil. The remaining 50% is hard to get oil.

~sigh~ as you're so sure of yourself could you please provide a proof or the references to back up your statement.

Just a hint: You can claim to have used a percentage of something if you don't know what the total amount is. As long as we continue to find new sources of oil that percentage used by a particular time will go down. Its simple mathematics.

Without counting the electrons in an AA battery, how can you know how many are left without destroying the battery? "It's simply impossible - mathematically and logically."

And yet we can tell by examining the profile of the power it's giving out over time.

Peak oil is a theory, not a law. Theories can and do base themselves on things that are not yet known for sure. If as time goes on, we make more observations that were predicted by the theory, we become more confident that the theory was right.

We have "plenty of oil" in the same way Social Security is fully funded and solvent... for about 30 years. The emphasis in the statement is on the "we" part, because you and I have plenty of oil but our grandkids are pretty much fucked. Claiming there is plenty of oil is the classic "fuck you, I got mine" mentality in action.

Every side has their own utopian/dystopian visions of alternative futures. Fortunately, if the history of prognostication is any indicator, they'll all be wrong. The future will prove to be something that no one expected.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to pick up some Soylent Green from my local moonbase restaurant in my hovercar.

You mean environmentalists are using wishful thinking when saying we'll run out of oil and we'll have to switch to renewable energy sources, even though the evidence now points to there being plenty of oil? Both sides are guilty of wishful thinking and selective reading of the evidence.

If this is in response to Cornwallis' link you have it totally wrong. The link is saying that claims that we will never run out of oil are wrong

I wish we could differentiated environmentalist from the scientists and the raving hippy nuts.

Every choice has a trade off. We need to diversify our energy sources vs finding the magic bullet of perfect energy that just doesn't exist.

Fossil Fuels offer a good energy per unit ratio, they can be transported, and stored. They can be used in small affordable machines, and it is rather cheap. The down side is when spent it produces harmful gases, and creates increases global warming.

Nuclear Energy can offer a lot of energy, raw material can be transported and stored, its output doesn't create toxic gasses. However, it does create radioactive waste that is hard to manage, and energy needs to be processed at large power plants.

Hydroelectric (They don't talk about this much, I am not sure why), Good source of energy, clean (assuming you don't kill too many fish). However you will need power plants, and an infrastructure to send energy, and you need to build it around water sources, not portable. (the best location is also what people would say is prime vacation areas and dosn't want the nature in that area to be spoiled with a large building....

You start seeing the point. What ever energy we choose to use will have its good side and bad side. The trick is to get the right balance, and improve efficiencies where possible.

Do we put solar panels on our homes, and have a smaller natural gas or nuclear plant to cover the rest?Can we make more efficient cars such as hybrids, or plugin electric with gas backup? Can you do this with more powerful cars/trucks people want?

I think it's because in the US, most of the natural hydroelectric capacity is already developed. Certainly in New England, every little river seems to have its own little dam or three. Yet those meet only a small fraction of our energy demand. So, increasing hydroelectric capacity seems unlikely to be a major factor in solving our energy problems.

Waterfall based, find a large natural waterfall, for example niagra falls and construct a bypass route with turbines in it. Power available is large and is limited largely by how much you are prepared to reduce the natural "spectacle of the waterfall" (according to wikipedia at niagra falls one third is taken by the US, one third by canada and one third is left to nature).

Dam based, put a large dam across a river and send the water through turbines. This is

You and the article are right. There might just be an unlimited supply of oil buried in the Earth. That's right, there's a wormhole open to another galaxy that perpetually creates oil as a spontaneous quantum magic trick.

No the key term people outside industry ignore is "economically feasible". The sources of oil that are being exploited now like the Canadian oil sands, Gulf of Mexico deep ocean, and the shale deposits have been known for decades. Yes, there is a new discovery of a field now and then, but for the most part, the problem has been economics. It wasn't economically and technically feasible to drill miles into the ocean floor or through layers of shale before. In the case of oil sands, it simply wasn't econo

Oil is a finite resource, it will inevitably run out eventually. In the meantime it is getting harder to get out of the ground and tends to involve us with countries we would rather not be too closely involved with.

Well, methane hydrates are actually a pretty plausible energy source, since if we don't mine them and global temperatures continue to go up, they will eventually wind up in the atmosphere anyway. Of course, burning them will make the CO2 situation even worse.

The bottom line is that taking refuge in the idea that "peak oil will save us from destroying the environment" is incredibly wrong-headed. If we are concerned about global warming, we need to deal with it now and not wait. Getting rid of subsidies for oil exploration would help—a lot of this stuff would be economically infeasible compared to solar if the producers couldn't deduct the recovery costs on their taxes.

Watched the weirdest conversation on @MorningJoe last week while flipping my way up to CNBC-about Winston Churchill changing the British fleet from coal to oil and causing the carve out of Iraq and the eventual radicalization of islam, was the smartest thing i'd heard all week but my brain couldn't compute that it was on MorningJoe......It was the first time i realized Donny Deutsch is actually a huge brain (was between him and The Atlantic editor) of course Joe just uhmed and ahed and cracked dopey jokes.-

Unless of course something happens to us in the meantime.(We could be wiped out by a meteor impact, or a gamma ray burst, and we wouldn't be using any more oil or coal.(or a plague could wipe us out...)

Of course there is a good side - we could have a break through in fusion (or other technology that gives us lots of energy cheap) and then we wouldn't need oil either.

I am a physicist with no stake in nuclear energy. I doubt fusion will be better than/effective/ fission, at least for a very long time (we'd have to get to aneutronic fusion for it to be significantly better). But the good thing is that fission is/actually/ pretty darned good. Fast breeders, traveling wave, and LFTR (especially) offer enormous advantages over current designs. Heck, even more conventional modern designs are much safer. But we'll be stuck with the old ones (or nothing) because even the slightest accident (if judged by demonstrated fatalities, i.e. none in the case of Fukushima!) means the developed world runs away from nuclear power as fast as they can, largely because they don't understand it (physics is hard). Natural gas explosions happen, um, every single day and kill several people every year (and those are just the direct deaths, not counting global warming, etc).

And in spite of huge explosions rivaling or exceeding high-profile terrorist attacks, the world is running in a full sprint/towards/ natural gas. Germany, Japan, the US... Abandoning nuclear and building natural gas power plants. Why? Probably because everyone kind of understands it. People cook with it, heat their homes with it. Nuclear still has the stigma of the Cold War nuclear annhilation, but the irony is that most newer nuclear power plants (LFTR specifically) aren't well-suited to the nuclear weapons industry.

And by the way, nuclear is cheap. What makes it expensive is delays. Delays caused by endless lawsuits of people utterly afraid of nuclear power. And so we CAN'T build new nuclear power plants. Instead of taking 3-4 years, they take maybe 3 decades as construction is stopped by the courts until being given approval to proceed. At, say, 10% interest rate, over 25 or so years that increases the cost by/an order of magnitude/ over what it would be with a quick construction. That is 90% of the reason for the supposed high cost of new nuclear power. This is cited by opponents of nuclear power as reason for why we should oppose nuclear power, but that is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy because lawsuits and political opposition slow down new construction. Meanwhile, we're doubling and soon tripling the carbon dioxide levels. Old nuclear power is cheap, still, because it has been operated for many decades and like renewables its upkeep and "fuel" cost is very low. Which is partly why utilities don't like them, since they have big upfront costs (like renewables) and the lack of fuel costs isn't a huge deal for them since they can just pass that on to the consumer. Both nuclear and renewables have too long of payback periods to satisfy investors wanting 10,15% annual returns. But for an economy growing at a moderate rate, even 5% return is plenty.

There's enough thorium to last hundreds of millions of years. We most certainly won't be the same species by the time we run out of nuclear fuel, and because of the recycling of the Earth's crust, there'll be more available by the time run out. Of course, the easiest to get stuff is still plentiful, and the tiny contribution of fuel costs to nuclear power generation is why thorium isn't looked at more closely. Also, LFTR reactors can burn up our old nuclear waste, so building new LFTRs would actually/reduce/ the long-term nuclear waste. They can burn up all the long-term waste so that only medium-term waste (which decays fairly rapidly, i.e. half-lifes of decades instead of thousands of years) is produced, which we can deal with until it decays to low levels.

That said, I support renewables. An idea I'd like to see more of is hybrid geothermal and photovoltaic power plants co-located using the same infrastructure. Geothermal can act as storage or backing power for when the sun don't shine, and solar makes geothermal last longer. Solves lots of problems.

what happens is we continue to convert carbon from lumps of matter stuck safely away under the ground to free floating carbon in the atmosphere and we slowly cook ourselves in a greenhouse of our own making, of the additional energy absorbed in the atmosphere doesn't cause such dramatic weather extremes that we starve/drown/fight each other to death first!

We all get to roast in the human-induced Global Climate Change that results form dumping all that C into the atmosphere. More realistically, we get to starve as our crops and farming methods fail to cope with the variability implied by climate change, aggravated by the terribly, dangerously narrow genetic diversity in agricultural varieties in use because we've allowed major corporations to "patent" and "exclusively license" the genestock that feeds us.

The free market is not the answer. The free market may be the efficient decision maker, but it lacks the things we say makes us human. The free market has no empathy, compassion, intelligence, foresight, or shame. Would you ask a person lacking those trait to be your boss?

The best "decision" we could make as a society is to get rid of all the government distortions in the market.

There has never been a society with both a functional government and no government distortions in the market. That's because *any* government action distorts the marketplace.

If the government has a police force to enforce laws, suddenly there's a demand for cruisers, tasers, nightsticks, pepper-spray, etc that wasn't there before, distorting the market. If the government has a fire department (with a very real government interest that its cities don't burn down), there's a demand for hoses, trucks, pumps, hydrants, etc that wasn't there before, distorting the market. If the government builds a road (to ensure that its police and fire departments can get to where they're needed), that distorts the property values around the road (e.g. look at what happens at nearly every exit ramp of major highways). If the government fights a war, that causes major distortions in the markets for clothing, weapons, ships, fuel, food, and just about everything else. If the government sets up any kind of court system, then that creates an entirely new market for people who know how to navigate that court system (a.k.a. lawyers). And of course any kind of tax or fee system set up to pay for the government's existence also distorts the market.

And that's just the basic functions of what we typically see has government.

There's a legitimate question of whether a government should have specific involvement in the energy sector. But the idea that there can be no government distortion of the free market is simply wrong.

Thats a bit egotistical. The co2 being pumped out will only continue until a massive dieoff because the weather becomes too hot for human food crops and nature will right itself in 10 or 20 thousand years with a lot less people on it. Overpopulation and global warming solved...the hard way.

Thats a bit egotistical. The co2 being pumped out will only continue until a massive dieoff because the weather becomes too hot for human food crops and nature will right itself in 10 or 20 thousand years with a lot less people on it. Overpopulation and global warming solved...the hard way.

Depends... if the place warms up enough before it starts cooling down, too much of the oceans will evaporate, and water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas so it will just keep getting hotter.

I doubt we will ever run out. What will happen is that it will become more expensive as the low hanging fruit gets used up and efficiency and alternatives become a better bang for the buck and we migrate to other technologies. I'd rather be on the early adopters end of this one.

It's not just about supply. It's about the work you have to do to get to that supply. Deep sea mining? Compare that to an array of solar cells in the desert. Heck, compare just about anything to an array of solar cells.

We're steadily making inroads on every issue electric has (primarily generation, storage, transmission); and in the interim, the end user already has many advantages. Huge torque from initial RPM for motors (you want a fast car? Electric is your friend. You want individual wheel drive? Electr

One thing I've always wondered about regarding large desert solar arrays, is what happens when there's a sandstorm? I mean, what fills the generation gap when the sky is blanked out, and how does sand get removed from the array afterwards? Are the panels safe from damage from the scraping of sand being blown about or will this damage them? Will the weight of deposited sand after a sandstorm cause them to break or collapse?

I think people assume solar arrays in deserts are a magical problem-free solution, and I understand not all deserts are prone to particularly bad sandstorms, but the sahara is and it's often cited as a place for such a solar array. Has any effort been made into researching and finding solutions to such problems?

The SEGS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Energy_Generating_Systems [wikipedia.org] in California near Edwards Air Force Base uses pressure washer systems to wash sand and dust off the heat-concentrating mirrors. They use water from the local desert aquifer which is running out. They also use water from that aquifer to cool the condensers on the output side of their steam turbine setup since there's no convenient river or ocean to dump the heat into.

Individual wheel drive as usually envisioned is silly. Yeah, it looks cool to have a direct drive motor on a wheel assembly But that's unsprung mass and you want to reduce it, not add to it. Once you have to get power to the wheel through a driveshaft of one sort or another, there's no point in having individual anything as it just adds duplicated mass for stuff like housings, mounting, etc. One motor, one gearbox, and two wheel drive right where the motor is - that's what's the most economical in any and a

Fact is, we are and we have put too much crap into the air. The weather is changing. With that change, the food supply is in jeopardy. But it's all pretty well timed as everything else seems to be collapsing at a faster rate not the least of which is the economy. Do you think Europe is in a bubble? It's coming for us in the US soon.

There are a couple of economic reasons that will drive renewable adoption:

It's not the size of the reserves but the cost of extraction that will drive adoption of renewables. As long as natural gas is cheap (and prices can be hedged) utilities will build natural gas plants at the expense of renewables. If prices rise sharply, gas becomes less attractive (since much of the cost per KW is for fuel) and other energy sources become viable options.

The energy density of the energy source. If a lot of space is required per BTU fossil fuels will dominate in many places. For example, a gas plant is relatively compact compared to a wind farm of similar capacity; so it is much easier to acquire land for a gas plant. For small scale uses, such as automotive or home fuels, the ability to get a long range or have a reasonably small supply pipe vs large panels favors fossil fuels currently. The economic driver here is "what fuel source gives me the best return on my needs;" such as the ability to travel or not want a roof full of solar panels.

Economics is what limits OPEC's ability to rise prices - eventually alternatives are viable on a cost basis as well as an energy self sufficiency one.

Quite frankly, global warning is not as major concern to most people than the ability to afford fuel drive, cook, and heat their houses; so selling renewables on that basis is very difficult.

Last year, we consumed 6.8 billion barrels of oil. This has been a pretty consistent average over the past 5 years, all things considered (5 years prior it was 7.5B, but seems to mostly fluctuate around 7B). And this is US consumption *alone* -- not even factoring in the increased rate of Chinese consumption, or any of the European, African, Asian, Australian, South American nations (Antarctica gets a pass, because it's effing cold down there and they can use a little oil to not die while watching penguins)

7.4B to 11B barrels is 2 years AT BEST if we pare down our oil consumption. Then those resources are GONE.

Considering "oh, but there might be more than we think left over!" is pretty pointless when we alone are consuming oil at this rate. Absorbing the mild inconvenience of reducing our oil consumption should be priority #1 for all of us. It doesn't solve the problem but it will (a) give us a *little* more time to get off the sauce and (b) start altering our habits and consumption practices in a direction that will prepare us for the inevitable end of oil reserves, which are guaranteed to happen someday.

We use all that oil to make ourselves a Blade Runner/Terra Nova/Modern Chinese environment, or we save it, preserve the planet and use the massive fossil fuel reserves responsibly for space exploration.

The major oil companies are promoting "No peak oil" stories to influence google results. They need to do this to keep asset prices up, soothe investors and keep the financing on which they depend flowing.

"Peak oil" itself is a bit of a straw man. The problem is declining net energy from hydrocarbons. Net energy from shallow easy wells that produced light sweet crude was great. Net energy from deepwater gulf wells producing heavy sour crude or oil sands where the bitumen has to be heated in order to be liquid? Not so great.

So bottom line. The absolute quantity of net energy in the first half of the oil on the plant is much greater than the net energy in the second half. Oil supply is NOT the same as energy supply.

Even if we found out we had an unlimited supply of carbon-based fuels, if you factor in all of the associated costs with burning them (production, transportation, environmental, health)... it turns out they're not really that cheap.

Unfortunately, we don't factor in ALL fo the costs into the price of our 'cheap' fuel sources... we're incurring a huge debt because of it, and the books are going to balance sooner or later. The environment will get its pound of flesh.

The only reason that things like shale oil and tar sands are economically viable is because the price of oil is so high. [wikipedia.org] Bring oil back down under $50 a barrel or so, and it will be too expensive to extract. Undersea mining? Good grief!

How much oxygen do we have, and how does that compare to the supposed quantity of fossil fuels?

The Earth originally had a reducing atmosphere, and the fact that we now have an oxidizing atmosphere is because it has been "bioformed". Biological activity yanked the CO2 and other stuff out of the atmosphere, locked it away in some other form, and released O2, leaving us with the combination of nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, and other traces that we consider - pleasant and essential.

If capitalism doesn't provide a profit motive to develop alternative forms of energy, government should.

We can create money to fund research into ideas that the free market doesn't immediately reward. The Fed creates money now; but it goes to the banks at 0%, who want to buy T-bills even if they only pay 2% or 3%; but the austerity-pushing Republicans want to limit the sale of T-bills. So the banks sit on the money instead*, and get interest on it if they store it with the Fed.

I'm sure this has been said before, but we probably won't come run out. It will just become increasingly expensive, until the point that other renewable energy becomes more attractive. As per the last 2 "oil ceilings" around $120 (one of many examples [resilience.org]) WTI (or was it Brent? I can't remember), it would seem that currently energy prices for trucks, planes, and consumers can't support >$120 price.

So basically, this problem is going to solve itself, and we won't run out of oil, because we will (mostly) stop

“When will the world’s supply of oil be exhausted?” asked the MIT economist Morris Adelman, perhaps the most important exponent of this view. “The best one-word answer: never.” Effectively, energy supplies are infinite.

This is dead wrong. The economic argument says that oil production is tied to the profitability of ever-more-expensive production technologies. We will never "run out of oil" because eventually we won't be able to afford to extract it, but this will happen while there's still oil in the ground. There's a similar physics argument, based on "energy return on energy invested": fossil fuel production ends when the energy required to pull it out of the ground is greater than the energy of the fuel itself. There will still be some in the ground, and it might be useful for making expensive chemicals, dyes, or lubricants, but it's pointless as a fuel.

So no, we won't ever run out of oil. But we will reach a point where you can't have any. To characterize this situation as "infinite supply" is ludicrous.

Yes fossil fuel will run out. Not tomorrow, Not next year, Not next decade. It will run out. What we do have is time. Time to develop an economical alternative. What we need to do is continue to support research in renewable energy sources and energy storage. We do not need to waste money on implementing uneconomical costly technology that is not competitive right now. Having the government tax low income earners so they can subsidize rich people who want to install solar, wind thermal etc is crazy and bad

...but we might run out of able to be cheaply extracted and processed oil and gas. We keep picking the low-hanging fruit. Technology marches on and fruit that was previously not low-hanging can become low-hanging, but that only goes so far. Over time, the cost of extracting and processing oil and gas will continue to increase. Presumably solar will continue to become less expensive. The hope is that at some point solar will start to be cost-effective relative to oil and gas even without govt. subsidies. At that point we won't completely stop using oil and gas, but global demand will take a nosedive.

But will they be competitive relative to oil and gas, which receive major subsidies today, both directly via the tax code, and also in the form of unregulated and untaxed dumping of waste CO2 into the atmosphere? The playing field is far from level. That also contrasts to the nuclear industry where waste products are massively regulated, and replacement of obsolete plant, as well as new construction all but impossible, because radiation is scary, while CO2 is boring.

1. Its still a dirty, poisonous product2. Its still being priced and controlled by large behemoth monopolies that will gouge us for every penny3. It still requires massive installations for refinement and transportation which remain dangerous points of failure4. The byproducts are still going to cause massive health issues involving lung disease and cancer5. It cant be used in space or on other planets6. Regardless of the warming aspects, its still not good for the environment7. The companies have a habit of tampering with democracies that are inconvenient8. The devices used to convert oil to energy require too much maintenance.We need oil to become obsolete.

I read the article several days back and if you read carefully you will see that their conclusions betray their politics. Amongst other things the article literally doesn't even acknowledge nuclear energy when discussing all of the assorted form of low carbon energy. Considering that nuclear power is the cleanest form of main load power that we have this can hardly be an oversight.

To environmentalists, natural gas is a bridge fuel, a substitute for coal and oil that will serve untilâ"but only untilâ"the world can move to zero-carbon energy sources: sunlight, wind, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.

The author is well aware of the human toll being extracted by the use of coal:

In March, for instance, a research team led by a Mumbai environmental group estimated that black carbon and other particulate matter from Indiaâ(TM)s coal-fired power plants cause about 100,000 deaths a year.

Natural gas would significantly reduce the source causes of these deaths and the author is aware:

Natural gas produces next to no soot and half the carbon dioxide coal does. In coal-heavy places like China, India, the former Soviet Union, and eastern Europe, heating homes and offices with natural gas instead of coal would be a huge step.

However instead of supporting a transition to cleaner burning natural gas the author shows what they would rather have happen:

For years, environmentalists have hoped that the imminent exhaustion of oil will, in effect, force us to undergo this virtuous transition; given a choice between no power and solar power, even the most shortsighted person would choose the latter. That hope seems likely to be denied.

The authors radical viewpoint is exposed here with the following view which they know has never happened in human history. The fact that this could result in the economic collapse of society is sort of acknowledged by the author:

Smil is correct - the sort of rapid energy transition we need has never occurred before. At the same time, one should note that no physical law says these transitions must be slow. Societies have changed rapidly, even when it cost a lot of money.

For fossil fuels, the extraction rate far exceeds the replenishment rate. Usage will only go up as more countries develop economies that demand more fuel for transportation, more electricity and more raw materials for synthetics. That means that the supply will eventually be exhausted. We can push the date out by finding more supply, but there's a finite amount to be found and it's going to be harder and more expensive to extract as time goes on (because the easier, cheaper stuff gets found and exploited sooner). Eventually though we are going to hit a hard exhaustion date where we just can't find any new supply. When that happens, do we want to have alternatives in place and ready to go with minimal disruption? Or do we want a mad last-minute scramble to replace everything on short notice and with no prep time?

The sun always shines, it just doesn't always make it to the ground where it's currently needed. However, we're working around that by planning huge solar arrays in places where it's almost always sunny like the Sahara and the American Southwest and then transmitting that electricity to where it's needed. Another proposal that's a little further out is to have huge solar arrays in space and then beaming it down to receiving stations on Earth (usually as microwave energy).

Huge solar arrays in space also double as an excellent weapons platform. I wouldn't expect that to happen anytime soon, even though it's a cool idea in principle. In any case, it's not needed—we can generate what we need on the ground. Mr. Fusion would be nice too...

"conventional" fossil fuel (and nuclear if you can find a way to shut up or bypass the nimbys) power plants can be put near where the powe is needed. They also for the most part* tend to generate power when the operators ask them to.

Renewable generation has to be put where the resources are and tends to be far more erratic in it's output**.

The result is that in a renewables powered world the grid will need to have much increased capacity for long distance transmission so that a supply peak in one area can b